


he excelled all men in the art of cunning, and he always cheats

by seraf



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Character Study, Deleted Scenes, Extended Scene, Gen, Internal Monologue, Introspection, Mythology References, POV Oma Kokichi, Parallels, References to Norse Religion & Lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 00:32:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19031116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf
Summary: miu is frigg, making her way across the virtual world and exacting a promise from every single thing that it cannot cause her harm.every thing but for one; for she deemed it superfluous to bother asking that of it.( kokichi's story in parallel to the tale of baldr and loki. )





	he excelled all men in the art of cunning, and he always cheats

_tell me a story,_ kokichi had insisted, the night before rantaro’s skull crumpled like an empty plastic cup. _you said that’s part of what you study, right? i want a story!_

 

kiyo had looked at him with deeply exasperated eyes, but it hadn’t been hard to see the hesitation, temptation, there. in the end, it seemed like he liked to share the knowledge he had more than he disliked kokichi. he’d leaned against the wall, elbow resting in one hand, eyes fluttering shut with focus.

 

_very well. one notable one comes to mind when talking to you, kokichi._

 

it was almost a shame that he’d been executed before all of this went down. the parallels might have fascinated him.

 

_it was a time of relative peace in asgard. however, baldr, and his mother, frigg, were having premonitions of a time when it would not be such anymore - the image of a dining table set up to welcome baldr in valhalla._

 

it was a time of relative calm in the killing game, since kiyo had been executed, but they couldn’t help but feel as though it was just a period of calm before the storm. miu, in particular, after everything, couldn’t help but fear death, fear what would come next. fuck, even _kokichi_ had someone he could trust.

 

_so, frigg made preperations. went to each of the realms and exacted a promise from every weapon and plant and stone that it could not hurt her son._

 

she was up to her elbows in code, muttering curses as she thought about every single thing that could be used for murder. deleting the knives, the toolkits in the shed, the rolling pins, writing up the code mod that made it impossible for things to break, shifting the programming of the water so that the avatars couldn’t sink in it were they to fall in.

 

_every thing, except for one._

 

she glanced over the bathroom briefly, checking over the items there.

 

_the mistletoe plant, which was so small and unassuming that she thought it superfluous to ask it._

 

for a moment, her cursor hovers over the toilet paper in the inventory, before she returns to working out the barrier she was creating halfway through the world. not like anyone was going to use the bathroom, anyway.

 

_and thus, frigg believed she had created a way to keep baldr safe from all harm._

 

she wasn’t above getting on her knees and begging them to come to the virtual world. her coding was set to _item,_ there was no breaking anything, and kokichi’s avatar had been edited.

 

_as did each of the other gods._

 

they weren’t ecstatic about the virtual world, but they did think - there was no way for people to be killed there. a place of some relief.

 

_all of them, but for one. loki - the guileful trickster, the liar, saw the one slip in frigg’s planning._

 

miu was desperate, and kokichi was smart, which made it all the easier for her to leave holes and for him to find them. he might not know all the reasons behind her plan or what she intended to do, but he did know this: miu was going to kill him on the roof.

 

_even mistletoe could be formed into a weapon, you see, in the right hands. so, loki carved it into . . . some say a spear, some say an arrow. the idea is plain, either way._

 

miu had gotten rid of all the ropes and cords, which meant it was possible to die of asphyxiation in the virtual world. nothing breaks here. it was child’s play to hide the toilet paper under his jacket.

 

_one of the gods who was observing this, but not participating, was hodr. sometimes described as blind, sometimes as gullible. sometimes both._

 

gonta still trusted him. even after all kokichi had done, he still trusted him.

 

idiot.

 

_loki approached hodr, and asked him - ‘ do you wish you could participate as well? do you feel left out, right now? ‘ and hodr agreed, because it was a revel for the rest of the gods._

 

‘ do you want to know a way to protect everyone? ‘ kokichi had asked, and of _course_ gonta agreed. he just wanted to be able to help all of them, even if the world was dead. even if it meant he’d have to sacrifice himself.

 

unlike hodr, gonta knew what the arrow was made of when he fired it.

 

_‘ i’ll guide your hand, ‘ loki told him, handing him the weapon he had made. ‘ all you need to do is fire. ‘_

 

‘ i’ll plan everything, gonta, ‘ kokichi had said, for the first time face-level with the entomologist, gonta crumpled to the snow in shock at what they’d just seen. the secret of the outside world indeed. ‘ but i need you to do the heavy lifting, here. i can’t do it without you. ‘

 

_and hodr accepted._

 

‘ o-okay. gonta will help kokichi. ‘

 

_baldr never realized there was a threat, even as hodr drew the bow._

 

miu never even considered the idea that she was in danger, when she backed him against the edge of the roof. why would she have? this was _her_ world, after all. until gonta was already pulling the toilet paper around her throat, she was only afraid of being caught.

 

_loki set the bow for the blind god, and whether or not you consider the shot on hodr or on loki’s hands, their aim was true._

 

miu’s hands clawed at her throat. were this the real world, this wouldn’t have worked. but her own coding proved her downfall - no matter how hard she tore at the toilet paper, her face kept turning more and more blue.

 

_thus, baldr, not half an hour previously deemed unkillable, perished._

 

in her own realm, with her own weapon dropped a foot away from her in the snow, miu iruma took her last wheezing breath.

 

_the gods were left reeling at the extinguishing of baldr’s light._

 

there was always that moment of shock, when they first found a body. kokichi had been almost scared, for a second, that miu wouldn’t have died in the virtual world. maybe she was throttling his body on the outside, and he was trapped in here for the rest of his existence.

 

but she wasn’t. she was cold and dead, sitting in her chair.

 

_worse, perhaps, was the fact that hodr had no idea what he had done. he didn’t know what the arrow had ben made of. he didn’t see baldr fall._

 

gonta doesn’t quite understand what the virtual world is, or what happened to his friend, or what everyone is talking about in the trial, but he _wants_ to help. he doesn’t understand why kokichi’s eyes are full of frustration, looking at him.

 

_but that could not change the fact that he was guilty._

 

he’s sobbing, full-body and confused, because he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t, but if everyone is saying that he killed miu, he _must_ have, but he can’t understand why.

 

_and, for killing baldr, the gods ruled that he must be punished._

 

kaito is the only one to press kokichi’s image on the voting board, when it comes up. even gonta, through his tears, chooses his own picture.

 

and monokuma laughs, and laughs.

 

_vali was born and reached adulthood in a day - a god born for the sole purpose of carrying out hodr’s execution. he was born, and he did what he had been built to do._

 

funnily enough, there are two vali, at gonta’s trial.

 

alter ego, created to give a confession that gonta never could, cartoonish eyes wide and sad as it explained a secret plan to kill them all, a secret of the outside world too horrible to share, an empty name in the killing game busters.

 

monophanie swelling, swelling, bursting. the giant wasp that came from inside of her, spearing gonta and alter ego and the pole they’re tied to. all three of them, consumed by fire.

 

born to kill, born to die.

 

 _and thus, baldr and hodr both died,_ kiyo had finished, spreading his arms slightly, demonstratively, _and the story ends._

 

 _well, that can’t be all of it,_ kokichi reasoned, watching him intently with bright purple eyes.

 

_oh? why not?_

 

_you said it reminded you of me, right? i think i get what casting choice you’re going for. so what happened to loki?_

 

_ah. fair enough._

 

_the gods were horrified at loki for what he had done, what he seemed unrepentant for._

 

‘ you’ll always be alone, ‘ shuichi bites, after kaito nearly cracks his jaw, and for a few moments, it’s hauntingly true, kokichi sitting on the floor of the trial room after everyone left, overflowing with a bitter silence.

 

a pyrrhic victory, in the end.

 

_his punishment was not as immediate as was hodr’s, though._

 

but at least kokichi gets to walk out of the trial room.

 

_at first, all there was was resentment. that loki lived, where baldr and hodr did not. distrust - not that there was ever much trust for loki in the first place._

 

for his own safety, kokichi avoided them. ate sukiyaki caramels in the hangar until he almost threw up, and tried not to think about how shuichi had given him them in the first place.

 

( there’s almost always someone in the warehouse or the kitchen. when he goes, he has to be quick and quiet, and he thinks bitterly that they really _must_ be stupid to think he’s the mastermind. what kind of mastermind sits in an empty room with whatever junk food he could grab, planning the script for his own death? )

 

_until, for all his crimes, the gods decided loki had to be punished._

 

he’d taken kaito. he’d taken kaito so they’d stop fighting, so that people would stop dying. and that had been the final straw.

 

himiko, handing the crossbow through the window to kaito.

 

maki, abandoning the plan and grabbing her own electrohammer, driven to the hangar alone, alone.

 

_so the gods took loki’s own sun, narfi, and tore him apart. used narfi’s entrails to tie loki to a rock._

 

it really was a shame kiyo was dead at this point, kokichi thought inanely in some part of his mind, watching maki break through the hangar doors in the exisal _he_ had made sure was no longer in monokuma’s control by using the hammers _he_ had designed. trapped by design in the hangar _he_ had tried to make a stronghold.

 

his arm was limp at his side as he watched the second bolt dig into his back, and he resolved to keep his eyes open as she fired the third. face death smiling, in the end, even if it meant nothing.

 

but it didn’t come. ( not yet. )

 

_a venemous serpent was tied above loki, dripping poison down on him for eternity._

 

strike-9 poison antidote, the little bottle read. kokichi wished it was a poison he knew something more about, as it makes its way through his body, sending his hands spasming so hard he almost drops the bottle handing it to kaito, almost ruins it all.

 

_loki’s wife, sigyn, sat by him, using a bowl to keep the poison off of him. but the bowl, eventually, would fill, and she would have to leave to empty it, and loki would scream, the venom burning through him._

 

it’s easier, when he has kaito to snipe at, he thinks. at least he still has his words, then - kaito is so easy to mock. so predictable.

 

but then he’s alone with the buttons and the realization of what’s about to happen to him, and he almost vomits. but it would defeat the point, if he let maki’s venom kill him now. ( that, and he doesn’t want her to have the satisfacton. )

 

_and there loki remained, and the world was brought one step closer to ragnarok._

 

kaito leaves the hangar.

 

kokichi, now about a millimeter thick, does not.

 

it’s the penultimate trial. this itself does not end the killing game, but it brings the edge ever closer.

 

* * *

 

 _why did loki do it?_ kokichi had asked kiyo, chin propped on his hands and eyes thoughtful.

 

 _well,_ kiyo replied, bandaged hand resting on the side of his face, _it’s open to interpretation._

 

_perhaps he truly was just full of malice._

 

‘ it’s definitely a lie, ‘ himiko insists. ‘ he’s not the type to shed real tears. ‘ she thinks about gonta, about rantaro and kaede and kirumi and ryoma before them. about how quickly his tears came and went.

 

she draws the conclusion that all of them were lies.

 

is she right? it’s too late to be able to ever tell.

 

_maybe there was some agenda he had._

 

‘ i guess we’ll never know, ‘ tsumugi says, plainly, and slowly releases the tension that had been building in her hands, finally allowing herself to breathe.

 

kokichi had quite literally torn up the script and written his own.

 

she wants to ask kaito for the script he gestures with, to see all of his mechanations and compare them to her own. to see how good of a mastermind he could’ve actually made.

 

he came far too close.

 

she wonders how much he knew.

 

_there is . . . one view i have on it that may perhaps be more cynical. in that . . . perhaps loki was just playing his part. tricksters, inherently, defy absolutes. if there is a peak deemed unclimbable, a weapon deemed unbreakable, a person deemed unkillable . . . it is their job to disprove that arrogance._

 

_perhaps loki was just doing what he knew no one else would do, but had to be done._

 

boxes upon boxes of notes, in his room, stored there along with the evidence from each of the cases, and enough other odds and ends to make it feel like this, like everything he did, was a fit of eccentrism. making it through the death road of despair on his own - how many times did that take him?

 

someone had to play the villain.

 

someone had to prove that the mastermind of this killing game _wasn’t_ truly omnipotent.

 

_but as many versions as i’ve read, there’s never been a concrete or absolute reason._

 

( a lie . . . or the truth? even now at the very end, i don’t really understand kokichi.but maybe that’s what lying is all about. the truth is in the eye of the beholder, huh? )

 

_such is loki as a character._

 

( kokichi . . . was the very embodiment of a lie. )

**Author's Note:**

> did my best to be accurate to the mythology and still parallel!


End file.
